4 ms·
I personally call "startup" a company at the stage when it attracts venture capital funding (i.e. high-risk investments). Palm, Inc. at the stage of developing
by smikhanov 17y ago
I personally call "startup" a company at the stage when it attracts venture capital funding (i.e. high-risk investments). Palm, Inc. at the stage of developing and releasing Pre fits into this category (and I bet the people in the Pre departments were working like in typical startup).
The respondents' businesses probably attract low-risk bank credits instead (i.e. the money entrepreneur must pay back at some point). This makes things different. Those businesses are probably into retail, or consulting, or something similar; the potential leverage is lower there. And these are not the sort of businesses that get most of the attention on HN.
- replicatorblog 17y agoIt is a matter of semantics at some point. Club Penguin was a tech startup that sold for mid-nine figures without raising any VC. Mahalo actually seems more like a plumbing company than a tech start up in a weird way, but has raised VC from top tier firms. The big distinction is building a business that can make you money while you sleep. something that can scale beyond the hours you work vs. being constrained by billable hours or their equivalent.
- pg 17y agoClub Penguin was funded by angel investors though.